Fatal Light (12 page)

There was silence in the late morning light of the kitchen. When my grandfather finally spoke he said, “I'll be going to lunch with Riley Shedd here in a while. We're going up to the airport.”

“Now you can eat at the airport?” I pulled the manila envelope of combat photographs closer.

“Oh, yeah. Some time now. Didn't you know that?” He half turned in his chair, leaned back, happy to talk about nothing in particular. “What is it? Couple years now, at least. Bill Clark opened a place up there.”

“Close the cafeteria in town?”

“No. About the last place still working the downtown strip. He fills the place on a Sunday morning.”

“I can imagine.”

“We'll have to go up. Food's not bad.”

“And a dining room that looks onto the runway.”

“Matter of fact it does. The one runway.” Earl grinned at me. “Watch the planes coming in from Pittsburgh, Huntington, Morgantown. All the big spots.”

I grinned back.

The front doorbell buzzed and Earl said, “That'll be Riley. Let him in, will you?”

I walked out through the dark parlor my grandmother had maintained in museum condition: purple brocades of vintage furniture, shadows and gleam of polished oak and mahogany; an Edison Victrola in one corner.

I opened the front door to Riley Shedd, big man in a shopping center pastel suit, friend to my grandfather forever. They had grown up together along the river.

“Riley,” I said. “You're out of uniform.”

“Well, now.” Riley Shedd smiled. “I'm a son of a bitch. The conquering hero returns.”

We shook hands. I stepped aside to let him in, closed the door behind him. He looked me up and down.

“I'm out of uniform,” he said, “but you're not.” He nodded at my olive green shirt. “Kind of.”

“The last little piece,” I said.

“Might as well keep what you can use.”

“Right.”

“The old man around? Got a limousine waiting at the curb.”

“He's in the kitchen.” We stood in the sun-filtered gold and auburn shade of the foyer, Riley Shedd inches taller with hands in his pockets, jingling change. “You still a cop, Riley?”

“Yeah,” he said, “still a cop. Pushing past retirement age here but, you know, the city fathers pressed me to stay on a bit longer and all that. I said what the hell. Don't have nothing else to do.”

“Come on back,” I said. “Earl's waiting for you.” As we walked through the parlor Riley said, “Heard about you getting that medal. Made the papers here, had the whole citation printed. All the lives you saved. You should be mighty proud.”

“Damn right!” my grandfather bellowed from the kitchen. “He's my damned grandson, right?”

Riley Shedd moved into the kitchen, stood in front of the stove. He glanced around, appraising, a policeman's habit. He put his hands back in his pockets.

“So, Earl,” he said, “you didn't tell me the hero was back.”

“Didn't know he was coming when I talked to you last.” My grandfather pushed up from the table and asked for his crutches. I handed them from the sink. He positioned himself over them and stepped away from the table. “Riley's chief of police now. He mention that?”

“No,” I said, looking at Riley. “Should be me congratulating you.”

“Hell.” Riley stood squarely as my grandfather moved past him. “Live long enough around here you'll be mayor.”

“Who'd want to be?” Earl spoke from the parlor. “This damned town.”

Riley glanced at me, lifting eyebrows and chin as he lifted his head, asking if he would be seeing me around. I told him to take care and he tapped my arm with his fist as he walked out of the kitchen.

In the foyer Riley held the crutches as my grandfather got into his suit coat. Earl said to me, “Ask a favor? That little patch of grass out front needs mowing.” He settled a homburg on his head, adjusted the tilt.

“Hey,” I said, “just like old times.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Mower's where I always keep it.”

He took the crutches back from Riley.

“You two stay out of trouble,” I called after them as they moved to the door.

“Too late for trouble,” my grandfather said as he stepped through the doorway, into sunlight.

I sat in my grandmother's chair on the front porch. The morning was fresh, only a breath of the bright heat that would come. A bread van with a rosy-cheeked Shirley Temple painted on its side puttered past. I was thinking of weather in Vietnam. “Funny what comes to mind,” I said.

“What comes to mind?” my grandfather asked.

“Fog.”

“Fog?”

“I felt like I couldn't see anything. You're worried about every little thing anyway, and you're out there walking around and you can't see. Drove me crazy.” Pigeons warbled in the eaves of the federal building across the street, fluttering out from ledges and back in, working their pigeon limps along the cornices. “Guy got hit by a jeep,” I said. “Walking to the latrine in the fog. Driver just didn't see him. Walks to the john and gets hit.”

Earl was looking at me. “Killed?”

“Yeah. Can you believe it? A world of hurt and you're walking out to take a leak and you get hit by a jeep.”

“A world of hurt. That what you called Vietnam?”

I shrugged. “World of hurt, world of shit, Bonetown, the Zone.”

“You had to kill people over there.”

It was an announcement, a statement delivered without apparent emotion and it seemed sudden and brutal, although he had spoken quietly.

My grandfather waited, not looking at me.

I opened my mouth to deny it, to pass it off in some self-assured manner, and my hands began to quiver and I could not speak and I was in tears, helpless, gritting my teeth, crying. I sobbed and shook and closed my eyes and there was the heat of a fire too close to my face, blood fire. I backed into the tremor, clamped my jaw, opened my eyes and mouth, and tried again to speak.

I was breathless.

My grandfather pushed a handkerchief into my lap.

I put my face in my hands and waited. When I could breathe I wiped my eyes, blew my nose. “Sorry,” I whispered.

“For what?” Earl said. “Don't be sorry. I should be sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. None of my damned business.”

I blew my nose again. “It's just that...I mean, you're there in the middle of all this...”

“...world of hurt?”

“Right. And you figure you won't make it out anyway, not a chance, and then you do and, you know, what happened? Where are you?”

“Why'd they give you the medal?”

“I carried a bunch of guys to a chopper.”

“And?”

“We were under fire,” I said. “Incoming. Heavy. We were bringing out a recon platoon, and I lost my partner so I got out of the chopper and carried in as many wounded guys as I could. Until I got some help. I was just doing my job, really. I carried them over to the chopper and shoved them in. They were...screaming.”

My grandfather gazed out at the federal building's parking lot. “Remember when your father left for Korea?”

I remembered: the family—my grandparents, mother, brother, sister—seeing my father off at the train station. I rode my grandfather's shoulders, waving furiously. My sister was in a blue bonnet and black patent leather shoes and very white anklets and carried a dime-store Fourth of July flag. My mother's eyes were puffed from crying, but she smiled and waved. I didn't know where Korea was or why my father had to go there, but he looked extraordinary in his uniform, lieutenant's bars polished to high gloss, the toes of his black shoes buffed to a mirror shine. It was the kind of day that lives in a child's memory as perfect, with its still air and clean light and wash of virgin color.

The ride home from the depot had been uneasy and quiet. My mother began to cry again, softly, privately. My sister had looked up at me, confused.

“Terrible feeling,” my grandfather said, reflective, gazing into an empty distance. “I didn't know if it was the last time I'd see him. And it was the second time he'd been in the army in less than ten years.” He turned to me, a quiet smile. “Thank God I didn't have to see you off. I couldn't have done it again.”

I sat in the fold of some final and complete desperation, thinking I could never explain what had happened or where I had gone or what had changed me. I was not sure that I knew or wanted to know. “It just seems nothing I can say...” I said, and faltered. “It's like wanting everything to disappear.”

“Nothing's going to disappear,” Earl said. “Except maybe you.”

I looked at him.

“If you're not careful,” he said.

“A peculiar thing, growing old,” my grandfather said. “It's as if you—everything you are, your hopes and dreams, your wishes, desires, the way you feel about the world—it's all the same. The same as always. But the world has changed around you.” Earl paused, looking at me. “You really want to hear this?” he asked gently. “I just realized how hard it might be for you to...grasp what I'm saying. The difference I'm talking about is not—I don't know, inventions and technology and all that, it's something...”

“Like you've lost your own time,” I said.

Earl smiled. “That's good. That's pretty much what I'm getting at.”

“It's how I feel. Ever since I got here. Everything is part of my boyhood. Other times. Things I loved that aren't mine anymore. As if I'm coming back here after twenty years.”

Two clocks ticked on the mantel. “As if Vallie's been gone twenty years.” I paused, and said, “We haven't talked about her since I got back.”

“No,” Earl said. “We haven't.”

“I haven't been able to...find the right words.”

“Not to worry. There are no right words.”

“It's as if I'll walk into the kitchen and she'll be standing there at the stove, grinning at me.”

Earl nodded, and for a moment his eyes were lost. “Well,” he said finally, “she's gone for you too.” He reached down beside his chair and lifted a half-finished bottle of whiskey, uncapped it, sat it on the floor between us.

“Might as well celebrate,” he said, “seeing as how we're both old men now.”

“So where to next?” My grandfather asked the question from the side of his bed, sitting in his underwear.

“Maybe Mexico,” I said.

“Maybe Mexico,” he repeated flatly. “Why the hell Mexico?”

I shrugged. “I want to travel. I've never been there.”

He looked at me. “Think about things awhile, right?”

“That. And see new places.”

“I would think,” my grandfather said, “you'd have had a bellyful of exotic far-off places.” He slapped his thigh. “And I could get you a job right here in town.”

“I can't do that,” I said.

“It's just what you need. Discipline, regularity. Besides, this is your home. You were born here. And I do still have some friends in town.”

“I know. But it's not what I can do just now. I'd let you down.”

Earl McFail was still in good condition. Defined biceps, full chest. He sat resting the heels of his hand on the mattress, looking down at his feet. “Maybe so,” he said. “But what the hell's left at this point?”

I smiled, self-conscious, not wanting to justify myself. “I don't know,” I said. “I really don't know.”

“Well,” Earl said, “no crime in that, I guess. Welcome to the goddam club.”

“Listen: we'll have breakfast in the morning, like the old days. Fried potatoes. Sausage.”

“Mexico,” he said. “Christ. Stay out of trouble down there. And don't get the clap.”

The second time I called Mary Meade's number there was trouble getting through. A succession of clicks and buzzes and the operator was on the line: “Did your party answer yet, sir?” Brooklyn accent.

“The number hasn't rung.”

“I'm sorry. One moment, please.”

Ringing. Between the rings a wavering wind: holding seashells to my ear when I was a boy.

Three rings.

“Hello?” Mary's mother. I knew her voice instantly.

“Hello.” My dry rasp: I worked for the next word.

“Hello?”

I swallowed. “Mrs. Meade? Sorry—”

“My God, it's you. Where are you?”

“West Virginia. My grandfather's place.”

“You're alive.”

I laughed. “Seems like it,” I said.

“Well, we haven't heard a thing from you for months. And I don't see your mom around much anymore. Is she all right?”

“Yeah,” I said, trying to sound cheerful. “Sure. She's fine.”

“I used to run into her all the time at the Safeway.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I guess you're looking for Mary and she's not here.” Her voice was crisp, simple and direct, as if the last time I had called was yesterday.

“Not around right now?” I spoke to take up more time on the line; I suddenly wanted very much to hang up.

“Listen...”

I waited. I could remember the set of Mrs. Meade's lips and chin when she talked on the telephone.

“...so you're all right?”

“I'm OK. You know. Getting on.”

“It's just that we've been hearing such terrible things about the war and all.” Her voice went soft.

I wanted to maintain my positive tone. “I'm just glad to be through with it,” I said.

“I'm sure,” she said. “Well, I'll certainly tell Mary you called. I'm sure she'll be very happy to know you're back.”

“Thanks.”

“So when will we see you? Let me make dinner for you. “

“Well...I'm here at my grandfather's place. I'd like to spend a little more time with him. Not seeing him in so long. And my grandmother died not long ago... .”

“Oh, I'm so terribly sorry. You know, I think I met your grandmother at one of those cookouts your folks used to have. Her name was Vallie?”

“Yeah.”

“She was a lovely woman. Cancer?”

“Car accident.”

“Really? How strange, at her age.”

There was silence. The distance between us roared. And then Mrs. Meade spoke again. “But anyone can go anytime in a car wreck, I suppose. I'm just so sorry.”

“Thanks. Mrs. Meade? I better get going... .”

“Call us when you're back in town, hear?”

“I will.”

“And I'll tell Mary you called.”

“Thanks.”

My hand was shaking as I hung up the telephone. I sat in my grandfather's bedside chair, looking down at the worn oriental carpet, tracing the patterns that whorled and connected in a roundabout of dead ends and threadbare intersections and stairways into open space.